Skip to main content

Incomplete Minds


Delivering a Martin Luther King Jr Memorial lecture, actor Kamal Haasan said that “incomplete minds that somehow manage to reach the seat of power” create inequality.  He went on to say that enlightened minds are with the poor. 

Power is something that attracts only “incomplete minds,” generally.  Power is one way of completing oneself, filling up the blanks within.  Why don’t we find scientists, philosophers (writers), artists and other such people in politics running after power?  Probably, their minds are not so “incomplete.”  Or they find better means of filling the blanks within: by inventing something new, thinking new ideas or creating works of art.  Those who are incapable of such creative contributions hanker after power.  Boss over others and prove your worth!

Imposing oneself on others is precisely what’s wrong with these incomplete minds.  We find them imposing their ideas, religion, culture, food habits, dress, anything and everything on others.

Dacher Keltner, a psychologist at the University of California, Berkeley carried out substantial research into the nature of power.  Power corrupts necessarily: that was one of his discoveries.  (Nothing new in it, of course, except that he proved it with research.)  Even the good people, once they reach the top of the ladder, morph into a very different kind of beast.  “It’s an incredibly consistent effect,” Mr Keltner says. “When you give people power, they basically start acting like fools.”

Mr Keltner went to the extent of comparing the feeling of power to brain damage, noting that people with lots of authority tend to behave like neurological patients with a damaged orbito-frontal lobe, a brain area that’s crucial for empathy and decision-making. Even the most virtuous people can be undone by the corner office.

Power makes people less sympathetic to others.  This is a psychologically proven fact.  People in power rely more on certain stereotypes and generalisations while judging people. 

Power makes us less human, in short.  Power makes people quasi-neurotics.  Look around and you will find umpteen examples.  Examples of incomplete minds that try to fill in their internal vacuum with hate speeches and divisive attitudes based on stereotypes and generalisations.


Indian Bloggers




Comments

  1. It's said that "Power tend to corrupt and absolute power tends to corrupt absolutely."

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. That's a classical truth proved by experience. We can also see it in actual practice.

      Delete
  2. I think power gives a high to those in it.. and in that stupor nothing else matters to them but themselves.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Precisely. They are drunk with power. And their stupor makes them think they are the greatest. They want to set the world right.and they ruin the world.

      Delete
  3. Power, the word that corrupted humanity. Probably incomplete minds gained power and created an uneven world. Yes, complete minds do not need power, do not need this myth.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Complete minds don't need slaves for filling inner vacuum. Anyway most people have some vacuum within. But the power-hungry people need subjects to sing alleluiah to their ego.

      Delete
  4. May be that's why The Holy Book says that the meek will inherit the world some day. Because, they can feel the compassion of the masses and their views aren't tinted according to their own comfort. Power twists the perspective and renders it unrecognizable.

    Very introspective post, Tomichan sir!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I have serious reservations about The Holy Book's conjectures. There is no sign of the meek inheriting the earth. They may inherit the heaven if there is one!

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl

The Little Girl

The Little Girl is a short story by Katherine Mansfield given in the class 9 English course of NCERT. Maggie gave an assignment to her students based on the story and one of her students, Athena Baby Sabu, presented a brilliant job. She converted the story into a delightful comic strip. Mansfield tells the story of Kezia who is the eponymous little girl. Kezia is scared of her father who wields a lot of control on the entire family. She is punished severely for an unwitting mistake which makes her even more scared of her father. Her grandmother is fond of her and is her emotional succour. The grandmother is away from home one day with Kezia's mother who is hospitalised. Kezia gets her usual nightmare and is terrified. There is no one at home to console her except her father from whom she does not expect any consolation. But the father rises to the occasion and lets the little girl sleep beside him that night. She rests her head on her father's chest and can feel his heart...

India in Modi-Trap

That’s like harnessing a telescope to a Vedic chant and expecting the stars to spin closer. Illustration by Gemini AI A friend forwarded a WhatsApp message written by K Sahadevan, Malayalam writer and social activist. The central theme is a concern for science education and research in India. The writer bemoans the fact that in India science is in a prison conjured up by Narendra Modi. The message shocked me. I hadn’t been aware of many things mentioned therein. Modi is making use of Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan’s Centre for Study and Research in Indology for his nefarious purposes projected as efforts to “preserve and promote classical Indian knowledge systems [IKS]” which include Sanskrit, Ayurveda, Jyotisha (astrology), literature, philosophy, and ancient sciences and technology. The objective is to integrate science with spirituality and cultural values. That’s like harnessing a telescope to a Vedic chant and expecting the stars to spin closer. The IKS curricula have made umpteen r...

Two Women and Their Frustrations

Illustration by Gemini AI Nora and Millie are two unforgettable women in literature. Both are frustrated with their married life, though Nora’s frustration is a late experience. How they deal with their personal situations is worth a deep study. One redeems herself while the other destroys herself as well as her husband. Nora is the protagonist of Henrik Ibsen’s play, A Doll’s House , and Millie is her counterpart in Terence Rattigan’s play, The Browning Version . [The links take you to the respective text.] Personal frustration leads one to growth into an enlightened selfhood while it embitters the other. Nora’s story is emancipatory and Millie’s is destructive. Nora questions patriarchal oppression and liberates herself from it with equanimity, while Millie is trapped in a meaningless relationship. Since I have summarised these plays in earlier posts, now I’m moving on to a discussion on the enlightening contrasts between these two characters. If you’re interested in the plot ...

The Real Enemies of India

People in general are inclined to pass the blame on to others whatever the fault.  For example, we Indians love to blame the British for their alleged ‘divide-and-rule’ policy.  Did the British really divide India into Hindus and Muslims or did the Indians do it themselves?  Was there any unified entity called India in the first place before the British unified it? Having raised those questions, I’m going to commit a further sacrilege of quoting a British journalist-cum-historian.  In his magnum opus, India: a History , John Keay says that the “stock accusations of a wider Machiavellian intent to ‘divide and rule’ and to ‘stir up Hindu-Muslim animosity’” levelled against the British Raj made little sense when the freedom struggle was going on in India because there really was no unified India until the British unified it politically.  Communal divisions existed in India despite the political unification.  In fact, they existed even before the Briti...